Cheshiretaurus

Removed the mirror this morning, (I had used gator glue) Respray and glued back on All happy its corrected, I just need to do the landing light on the Dooley bird next and also wonder if I should fit aerial wires and if so what arrangement, there were many! Difficult to see as they dont show very well on 1940s photos. CT

Well recovered. So thats how you got your user name then.

Great. But I cant see it on the GB calendar.

Thanks for the comments during the build. Actually on reflection I may have made and error there, The Hunters mirror is white and I had in my mind I had also seen a pic of the Queen mirror being white, I'm mistaken, I've just looked at this pic and my best guess is now olive drab. Will have to change mine now. Regards CT

Fourth and last of a quad build of Mustangs. Mustang Mk IV KM262 DooleyBird flown Flt Lt Arthur 'Joe' Doley No.19 Squadron at RAF Acklington 1945 Scale 1:72 Kit Airfix P51D with Freightdog Mustang IV conversion Decals inspired from Matchbox kit but used Model Alliance sheet, Roundels from Academy P51B, Stencils from Airfix P51D Paint MRP / Alclad CT

Third of a quad build of Mustangs. Mustang P51B 42-106448 The Hun Hunter 'Texas flown Henry William Brown 334th squadron 355th fighter group at RAF Steeple Morden 1944 Scale 1:72 Kit Academy P51B Decals from Airfix P51B Kit & home inkjet printed, Codes painted Paint MRP / Alclad CT

Second of a quad build of Mustangs. Mustang P51B 43-12214 Rebel Queen flown F/O Fred Glover 336th squadron 4th fighter group at RAF Debden 1944 Scale 1:72 Kit Academy P51B Decals from Academy Kit & home inkjet printed Paint MRP CT

Final bit were done on the Dooley Bird, and I think we are done.... Thanks for watching and joining me on the journey Regards CT

Six o'clock update Completed the weathering and final matt coat on the Queen & Hunter, after that I did the underwing lights. Tried many different ways of doing these in the past, Current thinking is as follows. This is also what I did on FB387 Punch some 1mm discs out of self adhesive aluminium tape and fix them in the light recesses Tiny drop of Tamiya clear colour in each light Followed by a drop of UV cure glue to make the lense. The Queen and Hunter are pretty much complete just need to add the mirrors and drop tanks. Dooley Bird is just about to get the final matt coat then I'll do the lights the same way. All the drop tanks just had a gloss coat to seal the decals, they will get a flory wash and then a matt coat possibly a little fuel spillage stains too. CT

Might actually be able to finish this quad build by tomorrow night. Aerials went on The Queen seems to have a simple mast so I used a length of 0.3mm plastic rod. The Hunter has a standard one so used the one from the Academy kit Dooley Bird also has the standard one included in the but anyone who has built the Airfix P51D will no this part is deformed (mould damage?) and of general poor quality so I used one from one of the other Academy kits After sealing in the Flory wash with gloss, all three got an oil dot weathering using Mig oil brushers, that was then sealed in and a matt coat put on all three. The Queen will be the next finished and has had the next stage of weathering done with Tamiya weathering master soot and a Aluminium weathering pencil was used to represent scratches and paint chips, all again sealed in The exhaust soot went on a bit quicker and heavier than I expected and almost obliterated the lady in red, I had to clean it off the decal with IPA on a cotton bud. Think ive had a lucky save with it. Next I started putting the undercarriage on the queen getting the angles right with a makeshift jig. Thats just setting now then this one might be finished tonight. Tomorrow I'll do the same on the Hunter and Dooleybird. CT

Saturday morning update, Manged to get home Thursday night and did the Stencils on the Queen & Hunter. Last night the Stencils I did the Stencils on the Dooley. This Morning I have given them a sealing gloss coat. They have just been given a coat of Flory grey wash on the green areas on the Queen & Hunter the rest goit a Flory grime wash. Ill let that dry now. Here is where things stand at Saturday lunch time I'll wipe away the excess in an hour or so then seal that in with gloss, attach the aerials then start weathering. Still to do:- Fit mirrors on the Queen & Hunter Fit undercarriage Fit stores Paint the guns, (again) Complete exhausts Matt coat Unmask clear parts take pictures.. CT

Small update. Hotel room modelling. Brought just enough stuff with me to get a few tasks out of the way, Id liked to have brought all three with me to get the stencilling out of the way but that may have involved going through and airport with them if work plans changed and risk damaging them. So plan is to get the propeller decals done and paint the tyres for the Hunter, The wheels were done a while back for the other kits but the hunter was a late starter. Propellers first, these will need a little microsol when I get home as there is just a little silvering in places to deal with before a gloss sealing and weathering. Next was the wheels for the Hunter, I brought a bit of Humbrol 67 tank grey (favourite colour for tyres) And with that an evenings modelling was complete. Hoping I might be able to sneak home on Thursday afternoon to start the stencilling. I've had a idea of how to cut an accurate mask for spinner bands like this, need to try it when I get home. . Its too late a plan for the Dooley bird but if it works I'll use it on future builds. CT

Also, turn your pressure down low maybe 10-15 psi. As low as it will still spray with really.

A technique that helps is to go very light. If you have needle stop limiter use it, and alternate with paint a layer then paint off and just air to dry then paint on again a few seconds later. And build up that way Works for me.

Busy weekend with the builds, mostly getting Dooleybird up to the same stage as the other two. To paint the brass tube guns i threaded them onto some fishing line and sprayed them black. this proved a little troublesome as even on the line they blew around a lot. maybe next time ill thread them on some stiff wire instead. Anyway they are now glues into place on the Queen and the hunter. The picture of the Dooleybirds right side on post above showed me I need to change the tone on the panel around the exhausts. Panel masked up and sprayed Alclad dull aluminium. Prop next this is the Freightdog resin one, Yellow first then used the AK cutting board to make 1.4mm (2×0.7) masking strips representing the 4" yellow tips. The middle of the blades was sprayed white then I masked a blank curved triangle shape cut on the Silhouette cutter to represent the Aeroproducts logo that I will make from an inkjet decal and apply in the same way as the lady in red on the Queen. I do have decals for this but found they are well overscale and need to be about half that size (2mm) So much for supposedly 1:72 White first then mask a band using very thin cut strip of tape for the edges, the spray the blue. the result Unmasking had some difficulty's as a lot of paint on the spinner lifted and also on most of 1 blade that I had to redo, I think Mr Surfacer 1500 black is not very good with resin although it was no issue on the resin nose chin. I had degreased it before putting the Mr Surfacer on. Probebly should have used my newley aqired Mr Surfacer primer 1200 on resin parts instead. Oh well every day is a School day. Now should iI risk remasking this area on the spinner as this is the second peel here or should i just put some aluminium on to make it a weathered paint chip.....think Ill go with the aluminium. Looks ok on the Dooleybird I wasnt able to find a decent 40" C type roundel for the upper wing. the matchbox ones are a not the right blue. So Im going to try to spray them, after a practice on some scrap card I went for it, not done this before. Roundel masks were cut onto Tamiya masking sheet with the silhouette cutter. Proportions of the circles for a C type are red 3/8 white 4/8 and blue 8/8 and 40" = 14.1mm outside diameter. Outer mask MRP marking blue Mask the blue MRP white mask the white MRP marking red. And prey..... unmask Not prefect but looks good if you don't look too carefully but the colours are right. Rest of the day was decaling, Rest of the roundels and fin flash came from the Academy sheet. Current status of the trio Think they are all at the same stage, Stencils next for them all. But its now a week away with work just at the wrong time, but I have brought some small parts with me to work on in the Hotel room. Best regards CT

Very good question The Matchbox kit is the only one that shows this all other sources show the stripe to be yellow, Airfix have it show this way on their 48th and 24th scale kits. On this photo it matches better the yellow in the roundel there is some discussion I read somewhere that consensus is yellow. Arthur Doley will know Isnt scale modelling such a can of worms. CT

A little further update Masking and spraying today. Did a little rework on the nose checks to clean them up then next was the yellow on the nose and wing leading edges Olive drab next Got a little over spray of the yellow on the wing so over sprayed that with Alclad again. ready for glossing next CT

Not too sure yet, The AK cutting template will cut strips down to 0.4mm so the loose plan is to mask it. Using tape spacers to help keep the distances constant. The silhouette cutter may be used to cut the spacers exactly the size i need if I cant do it on the cutting template.

Did you need to change some colours? Just trying to rework this area right now. Its tricky.

Dooleybird nose checks, The white nose band being 4mm wide was first further masked into two 2mm strips. Rear line to spray first Using the AK cutting template I cut lots of 1mm x 5mm strips of masking tape and using them as pairs masked off the 2mm rear line of checks with some strips temporary applied as spacers to get the next check in the right place. I worked from the top centre line of the cowl downwards on either side to keep things parallel. with luck they met perfectly at the bottom. once complete I painted my own mix of blue (65% MRP Insignia blue and 35% MRP white) Next I unmasked the little strips and the forward line of the nose checks to reveal the blue checks. I now used more of the little strips of tape over the blue checks and extend foreword to the front line of the nose band. Then the rear blue and white rear band was masked over. Spray blue again. Unmask all to reveal the checks. This might explain the process. Rear line Foreword line Done, a little touching up here and there but overall I like it. CT

Sunday Morning progress report for the last week. Working away last week so only had yesterday and today for the GB and not enough pictures taken. The Queen has all her main decals on, The lady in red went on very well and looks very good. Much better that the depiction on the Academy sheet (She looks a bit p..sed off really) The Rebel Queen name was gut from the original decal. first one I dis seemed a bit misaligned so cut it from the other sheet and chose the best before the first one set into place. When it came to the stars and bars I tried to use the ones from the Academy sheet and they just simply started falling apart and disintegrating. eventually to an unrecoverable. state, same when I tried from the second sheet (I have 2 identical sheets) they were discarded and I got them from the Airfix P51D sheet instead. I did try to cut masks and paint them but I discovered I need more practice at that and the completion deadline is not really far away. They are not quite as neat as i would like them. So here is the Queen this morning. The Hunter has been decaled too and as with the Queen the stars and bars fell apart so another Airfix P51D in the stash was opened and the decal sheet used. The swastikas decal was printed and applied, however it shrunk ever so slightly as it set, only a little but enough so that some swastikas were no longer aligned with the white circles. I tried several more times getting the same result before resorting to cutting it into 3 sections and applying those to reduce the effect of the shrinkage. This was just the start of the dealing problem for this, The 'Hun Hunter Texas' name on the old Airfix P51B sheet went on ok but the white is not very strong and was too long for the panel on the Academy kit. When I came to put on the yellow decals I found that Airfix had not bothered to print a white background before the yellow so I was like using one printed on clear inkjet sheet and the decal was pretty much invisible once applied. I scanned a paint sample from the MRP paint I used and used this for the background colour for an inkjet decal onto white sheet with a resized hun hunter name. I had trouble matching the green so after several attempts I decided to just use the yellow ones from this and use the white ones from the Airfix sheet. The results are not too bad if you don't look too closely. The Dooleybird has been untouched for a few weeks so yesterday I Sprayed it with several tones of Alclad using the same tones as I used on the underside of the Hunter. also the undercarriage bays got MRP Zinc chromate primer and the nose painted white ready for the Checks to be painted on. later. More on this later today I think. Finally the Current status of the Quad Mustang build. Regards CT

That went very well 👍

Yes its not a good one is it. First one I saw when i was looking for a picture for this thread. That's really useful info Mike thanks for that. I have some more P51 builds on the go at the moment but these ones are too far built for a change like that. Have more P51s in the stash ready to start so it would be worth me making those corrections on those. Incidentally I did come across a picture of the guns a few days ago showing the offset from the LE centre line. All good stuff to know. Thanks. Normally I end up over weathering but in this occasion I decided to stop before getting to the enough weathering point. Knowing I can add more easily but not take it away. Think this stopping short plan worked. Difficult to judge when enough is enough as im sure you know. Thanks for all the feed back. CT

Mustang Mk III from No. 315 Polish Squadron flown by Squadron leader Eugeniusz Horbaczewski at RAF Brenzette Scale 1:72 Kit Academy P51B Decals from Academy Kit Paint MRP Weathering Flory grey wash, Mig oil brushers, Tamiya weathering masters, AK wethering pencils. Matt clear coat MRP Aftermarket, Eduard Canopy mask. Little lens landing light Scratch built Landing cover from OHP film, Ariel from 0.1mm nickle rod Part of a quad of Mustangs in the current Mustang group build Thanks for looking CT Mark

AFIK the Welsh models kit is the only one in 1/72 Im not aware of one in 1/48. I have a Welsh models one in the stash that Im going to do as an Eastern example. Think it is just the decals that are different per boxing. If you do get a Welsh models kit then you will need to reverse the blade angle one one prop as J41 props turn in opposite directions.